approaching when I should have to start down-river. Even the cheerful
Willie was getting discouraged, and instead of accounts of the
miraculous bags hunters made at the end of their trips, I began to
be told of people who were unfortunate enough to go out without
anything. I made up my mind to put in the last few days hunting from
the Popple Cabin, so one rainy noon, after a morning’s hunt along the
river, we shouldered our packs and tramped off to the little cabin
from which Bill and I had hunted. Wirre was with us, and we left him
to dry out the cabin while we went off to try a late afternoon’s
hunt. As we were climbing the hill from which Bill and I used to
watch the little pond, Willie caught sight of a moose on the side of
a hill a mile away. One look through our field-glasses convinced us
it was a good bull. A deep wooded valley intervened, and down into it
we started at headlong speed, and up the other side we panted. As we
neared where we believed the moose to be, I slowed down in order to
get my wind in case I had to do some quick shooting. I soon picked up
the moose and managed to signal Willie to stop. The moose was walking
along at the edge of the woods somewhat over two hundred yards to
our left. The wind was favorable, so I decided to try to get nearer
before shooting. It was a mistake, for which I came close to paying
dearly; suddenly, and without any warning, the great animal swung
into the woods and disappeared before I could get ready to shoot.
Willie had his birch-bark horn with him and he tried calling, but
instead of coming toward us, we could hear the moose moving off in
the other direction. The woods were dense, and all chance seemed
to have gone. With a really good tracker, such as are to be found
among some of the African tribes, the task would have been quite
simple, but neither Willie nor I was good enough. We had given up
hope when we heard the moose grunt on the hillside above us. Hurrying
toward the sound, we soon came into more open country. I saw him in
a little glade to our right; he looked most impressive as he stood
there, nearly nineteen hands at the withers, shaking his antlers
and staring at us; I dropped to my knee and shot, and that was the
first that Willie knew of our quarry’s presence. He didn’t go far
after my first shot, but several more were necessary before he fell.
We hurried up to examine him; he was not yet dead, and when we were
half a dozen yards away, he staggered to his feet and started for us,
but he fell before he could reach us. Had I shot him the first day I
might have had some compunction at having put an end to such a huge,
handsome animal, but as it was I had no such feelings. We had hunted
long and hard, and luck had been consistently against us.
Our chase had led us back in a quartering direction toward camp,
which was now not more than a mile away; so Willie went to get
Wirre, while I set to work to take the measurements and start on the
skinning. Taking off a whole moose hide is no light task, and it was
well after dark before we got it off. We estimated the weight of the
green hide as well over a hundred and fifty pounds, but probably
less than two hundred. We bundled it up as well as we could in some
pack-straps, and as I seemed best suited to the task, I fastened it
on my back.
The sun had gone down, and that mile back to camp, crawling over dead
falls and tripping on stones, was one of the longest I have ever
walked. The final descent down the almost perpendicular hillside
was the worst. When I fell, the skin was so heavy and such a clumsy
affair that I couldn’t get up alone unless I could find a tree to
help me; but generally Willie would start me off again. When I
reached the cabin, in spite of the cold night-air, my clothes were as
wet as if I had been in swimming. After they had taken the skin off
my shoulders, I felt as if I had nothing to hold me down to earth,
and might at any moment go soaring into the air.
Next morning I packed the skin down to the main camp, about three
miles, but I found it a much easier task in the daylight. After
working for a while on the skin, I set off to look for a cow moose,
but, as is always the case, where they had abounded before, there was
none to be found now that we wanted one.
The next day we spent tramping over the barren hillsides after
caribou. Willie caught a glimpse of one, but it disappeared into a
pine forest before we could come up with it. On the way back to camp
I shot a deer for meat on our way down the river.
I had determined to have one more try for a cow moose, and next
morning was just going off to hunt some lakes when we caught sight
of an old cow standing on the opposite bank of the river about half
a mile above us. We crossed and hurried up along the bank, but when
we reached the bog where she had been standing she had disappeared.
There was a lake not far from the river-bank, and we thought that she
might have gone to it, for we felt sure we had not frightened her.
As we reached the lake we saw her standing at the edge of the woods
on the other side, half hidden in the trees. I fired and missed, but
as she turned to make off I broke her hind quarter. After going a
little distance she circled back to the lake and went out to stand in
the water. We portaged a canoe from the river and took some pictures
before finishing the cow. At the point where she fell the banks of
the lake were so steep that we had to give up the attempt to haul
the carcass out. I therefore set to work to get the skin off where
the cow lay in the water. It was a slow, cold task, but finally I
finished and we set off downstream, Wirre in one canoe and Willie
and myself in the other. According to custom, the moose head was laid
in the bow of our canoe, with the horns curving out on either side.
[Illustration: Bringing out the trophies of the hunt]
We had been in the woods for almost a month, and in that time we
had seen the glorious changes from summer to fall and fall to early
winter, for the trees were leafless and bare. Robinson’s lines kept
running through my head as we sped downstream through the frosty
autumn day:
“Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead
black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland, and a wailing through the
woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that
love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of
autumn
Put off the summer’s languor, with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot
follow,
To the slopes of other valleys, and the sounds of other shores.”
V
Two Book-Hunters in South America
V
TWO BOOK-HUNTERS IN SOUTH AMERICA
_In Collaboration with Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt_
The true bibliophile will always find time to exercise his calling,
no matter where he happens to be, or in what manner he is engaged
in making his daily bread. In some South American cities, more
particularly in Buenos Ayres, there is so little to do outside of
one’s office that were there more old bookstores it would be what
Eugene Field would have called a bibliomaniac’s paradise. To us
wanderers on the face of the earth serendipity in its more direct
application to book-collecting is a most satisfactory pursuit;
for it requires but little capital, and in our annual flittings
to “somewhere else” our purchases necessitate but the minimum of
travelling space. There are two classes of bibliophiles--those to
whom the financial side is of little or no consequence, and those
who, like the clerk of the East India House, must count their
pennies, and save, and go without other things to counterbalance an
extravagance in the purchase of a coveted edition. To the former
class these notes may seem overworldly in their frequent allusion
to prices; but to its authors the financial side must assume its
relative importance.
Among the South American republics, Brazil undeniably takes
precedence from a literary standpoint. Most Brazilians, from Lauro
Muller, the minister of foreign affairs, to the postmaster of the
little frontier town, have at some period in their lives published,
or at all events written, a volume of prose or verse. It comes to
them from their natural surroundings, and by inheritance, for once
you except Cervantes, the Portuguese have a greater literature
than the Spaniards. There is therefore in Brazil an excellent and
widely read native literature, and in almost every home there are
to be found the works of such poets as Gonçalves Diaz and Castro
Alves, and historians, novelists, and essayists like Taunay, Couto
de Magalhãens, Alencar, and Coelho Netto. Taunay’s most famous
novel, _Innocencia_, a tale of life in the frontier state of Matto
Grosso--“the great wilderness”--has been translated into seven
languages, including the Japanese and Polish. The literature of
the mother country is also generally known; Camões is read in the
schools, and a quotation from the Lusiads is readily capped by a
casual acquaintance in the remotest wilderness town. Portuguese
poets and playwrights like Almeda Garret, Bocage, Quental and Guerra
Junquera; and historians and novelists such as Herculano, Eça de
Queiroz, or Castello Branco are widely read.
In Brazil, as throughout South America, French is almost universally
read; cheap editions of the classics are found in most homes,
and bookstores are filled with modern French writers of prose or
verse--sometimes in translation, and as frequently in the original.
Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo abound in old bookstores, which are
to be found in fewer numbers in others of the larger towns, such
as Manaos, Para, Pernambuco, Bahia, Curytiba, or Porto Alegre. In
the smaller towns of the interior one runs across only new books,
although occasionally those who possess the “flaire” may chance upon
some battered treasure.
The line which is of most interest, and in South America presents
the greatest latitude, is undoubtedly that of early voyages and
discoveries. Probably it was because they were in a greater or less
degree voyagers or explorers themselves that the Americans and
English who came to South America seventy or eighty years ago brought
with them books of exploration and travel, both contemporary and
ancient. Many of these volumes, now rare in the mother country, are
to be picked up for a song in the old bookstores of the New World.
The accounts of the Conquistadores and early explorers, now in the
main inaccessible except in great private collections or museums,
have frequently been reprinted, and if written in a foreign tongue,
translated, in the country which they describe. Thus the account of
Père Yveux was translated and printed in Maranhão in 1878, and this
translation is now itself rare. We picked up a copy for fifty cents
in a junk-store in Bahia, but in São Paulo had to pay the market
price for the less rare translation of Hans Stade’s captivity. Ulrich
Schmidel’s entertaining account of the twenty years of his life spent
in the first half of the sixteenth century in what is now Argentina,
Paraguay, and Brazil, has been excellently translated into Spanish
by an Argentine of French descent, Lafoyne Quevedo, the head of
the La Plata museum. We had never seen the book until one day at
the judicial auction held by the heirs of a prominent Argentine
lawyer. Books published in Buenos Ayres are as a whole abominably
printed, but this was really beautiful, so we determined to get it.
The books were being sold in ill-assorted lots, and this one was
with three other volumes; one was an odd volume of Italian poetry,
one a religious treatise, and the third a medical book. Bidding
had been low, and save for standard legal books, the lots had been
going at two or three dollars apiece. Our lot quickly went to five
dollars. There was soon only one man bidding against us. We could
not understand what he wanted, but thought that perhaps the Schmidel
was worth more than we had imagined. Our blood was up and we began
trying to frighten our opponent by substantial raises; at fourteen
he dropped out. The dealers in common with every one else were much
intrigued at the high bidding, and clearly felt that something had
escaped them. The mystery was solved when our opponent hurried
over to ask what we wanted for the odd volume of Italian verse--it
belonged to him and he had loaned it to the defunct lawyer shortly
before his death. We halved the expenses and the lot, and, as a
curious sequel, later found that the medical book which had quite
accidentally fallen to our share was worth between fifteen and twenty
dollars.
Prices in Brazil seemed very high in comparison with those of
Portugal and Spain, but low when compared with Argentina. On the
west coast we found books slightly less expensive than in Brazil,
where, however, the prices have remained the same as before the war,
though the drop in exchange has given the foreigner the benefit
of a twenty-five per cent reduction. There are a fair number of
auctions, and old books are also sold through priced lists, published
in the daily papers. We obtained our best results by search in the
bookshops. It was in this way that we got for three dollars the
first edition of Castelleux’s _Voyage dans la Partie Septentrionale
de l’Amerique_, in perfect condition, and for one dollar Jordan’s
_Guerra do Paraguay_, for which a bookseller in Buenos Ayres had
asked, as a tremendous bargain, twelve dollars.
In São Paulo after much searching we found Santos Saraiva’s
paraphrase of the Psalms, a famous translation, quite as beautiful
as our own English version. The translator was born in Lisbon. His
father was a Jewish rabbi, but he entered the Catholic Church, became
a priest, and went to an inland parish in southern Brazil. After some
years he left the Church and settled down with a Brazilian woman in
a small, out-of-the-way fazenda, where he translated the Psalms, and
also composed a Greek lexicon that is regarded as a masterpiece. He
later became instructor in Greek in Mackenzie College in São Paulo,
confining his versatile powers to that institution until he died.
The dearth of native literature in Buenos Ayres is not surprising,
for nature has done little to stimulate it, and in its fertility
much to create the commercialism that reigns supreme. The country
is in large part rolling prairie-land, and although there is an
attraction about it in its wild state, which has called forth a
gaucho literature that chiefly takes form in long and crude ballads,
the magic of the prairie-land is soon destroyed by houses, factories,
dump-heaps, and tin cans. At first sight it would appear hopeless
ground for a bibliophile, but with time and patience we found a fair
number of old bookstores; and there rarely passes a week without a
book auction, or at any rate an auction where some books are put up.
Among the pleasantest memories of our life in Buenos Ayres are those
of motoring in to a sale from our house in Belgrano, along the famous
Avenida Alvear, on starlit nights, with the Southern Cross high and
brilliant. Occasionally when the books we were interested in were
far between, we would slip out of the smoke-laden room for a cup of
unrivalled coffee at the Café Paulista, or to watch Charlie Chaplin
as “Carlitos” amuse the Argentine public.
The great percentage of the books one sees at auctions or in
bookstores are strictly utilitarian; generally either on law or
medicine. In the old bookstores there are, as in Boston, rows of
religious books, on which the dust lies undisturbed. In Argentine
literature there are two or three famous novels; most famous of these
is probably Marmol’s _Amalia_, a bloodthirsty and badly written
story of the reign of Rosas--the gaucho Nero. Bunge’s _Novela de la
Sangre_ is an excellently given but equally lurid account of the
same period. _La Gloria de Don Ramiro_, by Rodriguez Larreta, is a
well-written tale of the days of Philip the Second. The author, the
present Argentine minister in Paris, spent some two years in Spain
studying the local setting of his romance. Most Argentines, if they
have not read these novels, at least know the general plots and the
more important characters. The literature of the mother country is
little read and as a rule looked down upon by the Argentines, who are
more apt to read French or even English. _La Nacion_, which is one
of the two great morning papers, and owned by a son of Bartholomé
Mitre, publishes a cheap uniform edition, which is formed of some
Argentine reprints and originals, but chiefly of French and English
translations. The latest publication is advertised on the front page
of the newspaper, and one often runs across “old friends” whose “new
faces” cause a momentary check to the memory; such as _La Feria de
Vanidades_, the identity of which is clear when one reads that the
author is Thackeray. This “Biblioteca de la Nacion” is poorly got
up and printed on wretched paper, but seems fairly widely read, and
will doubtless stimulate the scarcely existent literary side of the
Argentine, and in due time bear fruit. Translations of Nick Carter
and the “penny dreadfuls” are rife, but a native writer, Gutierrez,
who wrote in the seventies and eighties, created a national hero,
Juan Moreira, who was a benevolent Billy the Kid. Gutierrez wrote
many “dramas policiales,” which are well worth reading for the light
they throw in their side touches on “gaucho” life of those days.
Argentines are justifiably proud of Bartholomé Mitre, their historian
soldier, who was twice president; and of Sarmiento, essayist and
orator, who was also president, and who introduced the educational
reforms whose application he had studied in the United States. At
an auction in New York we secured a presentation copy of his _Vida
de Lincoln_, written and published in this country in 1866. Mitre
first published his history of General Belgrano, of revolutionary
fame, in two volumes in 1859. It has run through many editions; the
much-enlarged one in four volumes is probably more universally seen
in private houses than any other Argentine book. The first edition
is now very rare and worth between forty and fifty dollars; but in a
cheap Italian stationery-store we found a copy in excellent condition
and paid for it only four dollars and fifty cents. The edition of
1887 brings anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars. Many copies
were offered at sales, but we delayed in hopes of a better bargain,
and one night our patience was rewarded. It was at the fag end of a
private auction of endless rooms of cheap and tawdry furniture that
the voluble auctioneer at length reached the contents of the solitary
bookcase. Our coveted copy was knocked down to us at eight dollars.
In native houses one very rarely finds what we would even dignify by
the name of library. Generally a fair-sized bookcase of ill-assorted
volumes is regarded as such. There are, however, excellent legal
and medical collections to be seen, and Doctor Moreno’s colonial
quinta, with its well-filled shelves, chiefly volumes of South
American exploration and development from the earliest times, forms
a marked exception--an oasis in the desert. We once went to stay in
the country with some Argentines, who seeing us arrive with books
in our hands, proudly offered the use of their library, to which we
had often heard their friends make reference. For some time we were
greatly puzzled as to the location of this much-talked-of collection,
and were fairly staggered on having a medium-sized bookcase, half
of which was taken up by a set of excerpts from the “world’s great
thinkers and speakers,” in French, pointed out as “the library.”
As a rule the first thing a family will part with is its books.
There are two sorts of auctions--judicial and booksellers’. The
latter class are held by dealers who are having bad times and hope to
liquidate some of their stock, but there are always cappers in the
crowd who keep bidding until a book is as high and often higher than
its market price. The majority of the books are generally legal or
medical; and there is always a good number of young students who hope
to get reference books cheaply. Most of the books are in Spanish,
but there is a sprinkling of French, and often a number of English,
German, and Portuguese, though these last are no more common in
Argentina than are Spanish books in Brazil. At one auction there were
a number of Portuguese lots which went for far more than they would
have brought in Rio or São Paulo. Translations from the Portuguese
are infrequent; the only ones we can recall were of Camões and Eça de
Queiroz. In Brazil the only translation from Spanish we met with was
of _Don Quixote_.
English books generally go reasonably at auctions. We got a copy
of Page’s _Paraguay and the River Plate_ for twenty-five cents,
but on another occasion had some very sharp bidding for Wilcox’s
_History of Our Colony in the River Plate_, London, 1807, written
during the brief period when Buenos Ayres was an English possession.
It was finally knocked down to us at twelve dollars; and after the
auction our opponent offered us twice what he had let us have it
for; we don’t yet know what it is worth. The question of values
is a difficult one, for there is little or no data to go upon; in
consequence, the element of chance is very considerable. From several
sources in the book world, we heard a wild and most improbable tale
of how Quaritch and several other London houses had many years ago
sent a consignment of books to be auctioned in the Argentine; and
that the night of the auction was so cold and disagreeable that the
exceedingly problematical buyers were still further reduced. The
auction was held in spite of conditions, and rare incunabula are
reported to have gone at a dollar apiece.
There was one judicial auction that lasted for the best part of a
week--the entire stock of a large bookstore that had failed. They
were mostly new books, and such old ones as were of any interest were
interspersed in lots of ten or more of no value. The attendance was
large and bidding was high. To get the few books we wanted we had
also to buy a lot of waste material; but when we took this to a small
and heretofore barren bookstore to exchange, we found a first edition
of the three first volumes of _Kosmos_, for which, with a number of
Portuguese and Spanish books thrown in, we made the exchange. We
searched long and without success for the fourth volume, but as the
volumes were published at long intervals, it is probable that the
former owner had only possessed the three.
Our best finds were made not at auctions but in bookstores--often in
little combination book, cigar, and stationery shops. We happened
upon one of these latter one Saturday noon on our way to lunch at a
little Italian restaurant, where you watched your chicken being most
deliciously roasted on a spit before you. Chickens were forgotten,
and during two hours’ breathless hunting we found many good things,
among them a battered old copy of Byron’s poems, which had long
since lost its binding. Pasted in it was the following original
letter of Byron’s, which as far as we know has never before been
published:[3]
A MONSIEUR,
MONSIEUR GALIGNANI,
18 Rue Vivienne,
Paris.
SIR: In various numbers of your journal I have seen mentioned
a work entitled _The Vampire_, with the addition of my name as
that of the author. I am not the author, and never heard of the
work in question until now. In a more recent paper I perceive a
formal annunciation of _The Vampire_, with the addition of an
account of my “residence in the Island of Mitylane,” an island
which I have occasionally sailed by in the course of travelling
some years ago through the Levant--and where I should have no
objection to reside--but where I have never yet resided. Neither
of these performances are mine--and I presume that it is neither
unjust nor ungracious to request that you will favour me by
contradicting the advertisement to which I allude. If the book is
clever, it would be base to deprive the real writer--whoever he
may be--of his honours--and if stupid I desire the responsibility
of nobody’s dulness but my own. You will excuse the trouble I give
you--the imputation is of no great importance--and as long as it
was confined to surmises and reports--I should have received it
as I have received many others--in silence. But the formality of
a public advertisement of a book I never wrote, and a residence
where I never resided--is a little too much--particularly as I
have no notion of the contents of the one--nor the incidents of
the other. I have besides a personal dislike to “vampires,” and
the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce
me to divulge their secrets. You did me a much less injury by your
paragraphs about “my devotion” and “abandonment of society for the
sake of religion”--which appeared in your _Messenger_ during last
Lent--all of which are not founded on fact--but you see I do not
contradict them, because they are merely personal, whereas the
others in some degree concern the reader....
You will oblige me by complying with my request for contradiction.
I assure you that I know nothing of the work or works in
question--and have the honour to be (as the correspondents to
magazines say) “your constant reader” and very
obedt
humble Servt,
BYRON.